Almost from their beginning, computer networks have allowed users to send electronic mail (“e-mail”) messages to each other. The first e-mail programs only allowed textual messages to be sent from one user to another. Later-developed e-mail programs allowed users to send a single e-mail message to multiple users at a time. As the e-mail programs became further advanced, users could attach files to the e-mails they sent. E-mail messaging became significantly more valuable when the Internet came into wide use. The Internet allowed e-mail to be transmitted economically to anyone in the world connected to the Internet.
Among its many innovations, the Internet introduced a new language called Hypertext Markup Language (“HTML”). HTML provides a standardized method for constructing graphical displays that can be viewed on various types of computers. One of the features of HTML is hypertext itself. Hypertext is textual information that, when acted upon (selected), performs a special function, such as invoking other text or information.
With the advent of the Internet and HTML, users could send hypertext information to each other within their e-mail messages. One of the most common types of hypertext information sent in e-mail messages is a universal resource locator (“URL”) address. The URL address is the location of a specific piece of associated information, such as a World Wide Web page. When the e-mail recipient selects the hypertext URL address contained in a given e-mail message, the e-mail recipient's Internet browser can automatically seek out and display the associated information.
As the popularity of the Internet has grown, there has been a corresponding increase in the incidence of e-mail messages containing multiple hypertext URL addresses. This has often resulted in recipients receiving multiple e-mail messages containing the same hypertext URL address. However, recipients have had difficulty tracking which of the hypertext URL addresses they have actually viewed.
To view the information associated with a hypertext URL address with current e-mail programs, the user must view the e-mail message and then select the hypertext URL address. The user's Internet browser is then activated to display the associated information. After the Internet browser has displayed the information associated with the hypertext URL address, the e-mail program designates the hypertext URL address as having been viewed (most often by changing textual color). Unfortunately, designation of hypertext URL addresses is not uniform as between multiple messages.
Another problem associated with displaying hypertext URL addresses contained within e-mail messages is that today's Internet browsers are indifferent to the order in which the e-mail message's URL addresses are presented. The Internet browsers display the URL address given to them. Once the web page is displayed, the user is limited to viewing the information defined by the author. However, the user cannot view the web page associated with the next e-mail message's hypertext URL address. What is needed in the art is a way to keep track of all the hypertext URL addresses received and a better way to view the web pages associated with each of the hypertext URL addresses.